An abecedarius (also abecedary and abecedarian) is a special type of
acrostic
An acrostic is a poem or other word composition in which the ''first'' letter (or syllable, or word) of each new line (or paragraph, or other recurring feature in the text) spells out a word, message or the alphabet. The term comes from the Fre ...
in which the first letter of every word,
strophe or
verse follows the order of the letters in the alphabet.
Etymology
"Abecedarius" (or "abecedarium") is a
Medieval Latin
Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. It was also the administrative language in the former Western Roman Empire, Roman Provinces of Mauretania, Numidi ...
word meaning "ABC primer", derived by adding the suffix "-arius" (-a, -um) to the names of the first four letters of the alphabet (a+b+c+d).
According to the
OED, the earliest use of its English cognate, "abecedary", dates back at least to the mid-15th century, preceding the first usage of "abecedarian" which, as an adjective meaning "arranged in alphabetical order", can be first attested in 1665.
The related adjective "alphabetic" (from
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
) has been used interchangeably with "abecedarian" since at least the 17th century.
Origins
The abecedarius is most probably the oldest type of
acrostic
An acrostic is a poem or other word composition in which the ''first'' letter (or syllable, or word) of each new line (or paragraph, or other recurring feature in the text) spells out a word, message or the alphabet. The term comes from the Fre ...
.
Its origins have been linked to either the sacred nature of letters and the mystical significance of these types of arrangements
or its
didactic use as a
mnemonic
A mnemonic device ( ), memory trick or memory device is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval in the human memory, often by associating the information with something that is easier to remember.
It makes use of e ...
and instructive device for children.
Indeed, this second type of abecedarii, mostly in the form of
rhythmic arrangements or songs, is still popular and widely used tool to teach children the alphabet or other concepts.
Use in literature
Ancient literature
The oldest abecedarii found are of Semitic origin.
In fact, all of the confirmed
acrostic
An acrostic is a poem or other word composition in which the ''first'' letter (or syllable, or word) of each new line (or paragraph, or other recurring feature in the text) spells out a word, message or the alphabet. The term comes from the Fre ...
s in the
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;["Tanach"](_blank)
. '' Book of Lamentations
The Book of Lamentations (, , from its incipit meaning "how") is a collection of poetic laments for the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. In the Hebrew Bible, it appears in the Ketuvim ("Writings") as one of the Five Megillot ("Five Scroll ...
'', in the praise of the good wife in
Proverbs 31:10-31, and in
Psalms
25,
34,
37,
111,
112,
119, and
145.
Notable
among the acrostic psalms is the long
Psalm 119, which typically is printed in subsections named after the 22 letters of the
Hebrew alphabet
The Hebrew alphabet (, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is a unicase, unicameral abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably ...
, each section consisting of 8 verses, each of which begins with the same letter of the alphabet and the entire psalm consisting of 22 x 8 = 176 verses; and
Psalm 145, which is recited three times a day in the
Jewish services
Jewish prayer (, ; plural ; , plural ; Yinglish: davening from Yiddish 'pray') is the prayer recitation that forms part of the observance of Rabbinic Judaism. These prayers, often with instructions and commentary, are found in the ...
.
Some acrostic psalms are technically imperfect. For example
Psalm 9 and
Psalm 10 appear to constitute a single acrostic psalm, but the length assigned to each letter is unequal, five of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet are not represented and the sequence of two letters is reversed. In
Psalm 25, one Hebrew letter is not represented; the following letter (
resh
Resh is the twentieth Letter (alphabet), letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician ''rēš'' 𐤓, Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew ''rēš'' , Aramaic alphabet, Aramaic ''rēš'' 𐡓, Syriac alphabet, Syriac ''rēš'' � ...
) repeated. In
Psalm 34, the current final verse, 23, does fit verse 22 in content, but makes the line too long. In
Psalms 37 and
111, the numbering of verses and the division into lines are interfering with each other; as a result, in Psalm 37, for the letters
dalet and
kaph, there is only one verse, and the letter
ayin is not represented.
Psalm 111 and
112 have 22 lines, but 10 verses.
Psalm 145 does not represent the letter
nun, having 21 verses, but one
Qumran manuscript of this psalm does have that missing line, which agrees with the
Septuagint
The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...
.
Medieval literature
Written around 393,
St. Augustine's well-known abecedarian psalm against the
Donatists is the earliest known example of medieval rhythmical verse.
Another example is the Old Polish poem ''Skarga umierającego'' ("Lament of Dying Man"). Such poems are important historical sources on the development of a language's
orthography
An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis.
Most national ...
;
Constantine of Preslav's abecedarius from the 9th century, for example, documents the early Slavic alphabet.
In languages that used a
runic alphabet
Runes are the Letter (alphabet), letters in a set of related alphabets, known as runic rows, runic alphabets or futharks (also, see ''#Futharks, futhark'' vs ''#Runic alphabets, runic alphabet''), native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were ...
, a local tradition of
rune poem
Rune poems are poems that list the letters of runic alphabets while providing an explanatory poetic stanza for each letter. Four different poems from before the mid-20th century have been preserved: the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem, the Norwegian Rune ...
s emerged. These poems list the runes in order, followed by verse that describes the word traditionally associated with the listed rune. The first verse of the
Old Icelandic rune poem, for the rune
Fé, is as follows:
Fé er frænda róg
ok flæðar viti
ok grafseiðs gata.
English translation:
Wealth = source of discord among kinsmen
and fire of the sea
and path of the serpent.
The
Bríatharogam, a poetic form similar to the rune poem, was also adopted in Ireland for use with the
ogham script.
A famous example of abecedarius in English literature is
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer ( ; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...
's ''ABC''.
Modern literature
One of the most famous and complex
modern examples of
alliterative verse
In meter (poetry), prosody, alliterative verse is a form of poetry, verse that uses alliteration as the principal device to indicate the underlying Metre (poetry), metrical structure, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly s ...
in the English language is
Alaric Watts's abecedarius ''The Siege of Belgrade'' which loosely chronicles
the historical event in 29 lines, each of the first 26 not only beginning with the consecutive letters of the alphabet, but also composed only of words beginning with the respective letter:
An Austrian army, awfully arrayed,
Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade.
Cossack commanders cannonading come,
Dealing destruction's devastating doom.
Every endeavor engineers essay,
For fame, for fortune fighting - furious fray!
Even though rarely used, some authors have preferred to use the term "abecedarius" for poems which follow Watts' arrangement, considering the "alphabet-in-acrostic" form just a loose application, as can be witnessed in these
self-referential
Self-reference is a concept that involves referring to oneself or one's own attributes, characteristics, or actions. It can occur in language, logic, mathematics, philosophy, and other fields.
In natural language, natural or formal languages, ...
lines:
An abecedarius always alliterates
Blindly blunders, but blooms:
Comes crawling craftily, cantering crazily,
Daring, doubtless, dark dooms.
Contemporary literature
In the words of the American poet and critic Edward Hirsch, "
e abecedarian has been revived in contemporary poetry with experimental force", because, "
radoxically, the arbitrary structure triggers verbal extravagances".
Hirsch names
Harryette Mullen's ''Sleeping with the Dictionary'' (2002),
Carolyn Forché's poem "On Earth" (2003),
Barbara Hamby's ''The Alphabet of Desire'' (2006) and
Karl Elder's ''Gilgamesh at the Bellagio'' (2007) as few modern examples structured in accordance with different variations of the basic abecedarian sequence, where the adherence to the form produces unusual and interesting aesthetic results.
In the case of
Forché's "forty-seven page poem", for example, the rigorous alphabetical order "guides not only the stanzas, but also the words themselves":
languid at the edge of the sea
lays itself open to immensity
leaf-cutter ants bearing yellow trumpet flowers
along the road
left everything left all usual worlds behind
library, lilac, linens, litany.
Mary Jo Bang's verse collection ''The Bride of E'' uses the abecedarian as an organizing principle, as do
Jessica Greenbaum's "A Poem for S.",
Thomas M. Disch’s "Abecedary", and
Matthea Harvey’s sequence "The Future of Terror/The Terror of Future".
Children's literature
Some of the best-known and loved abecedarians have been written for children, such as
Dr. Seuss's ''
ABC'' or the roughly half-dozen alphabet books of
Edward Gorey, the most notorious among them ''
The Gashlycrumb Tinies''.
However, even the most experimental authors of the twentieth century have authored
children's or quasi-children abecedarians. Written in an attempt to compose "a birthday book
hewould have liked as a child", ''
To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays'',
Gertrude Stein's intended follow-up to her first children's book, ''The World Is Round'', has been described as "a romp through the alphabet"
and an "unusual alphabet book".
Also,
Djuna Barnes' last book, ''
Creatures in an Alphabet'' is a collection of rhyming
quatrains about different
animal
Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the Biology, biological Kingdom (biology), kingdom Animalia (). With few exceptions, animals heterotroph, consume organic material, Cellular respiration#Aerobic respiration, breathe oxygen, ...
s, ordered, albeit loosely, in an alphabet sequence.
Related concepts
Iroha mojigusari
Iroha mojigusari is a
Japanese poetic form, a "specialized version" of the abecedarius, in which the first line begins with the first and ends with the second character of the alphabet, the second one begins with the third and ends with the fourth character of the alphabet, and so on, "until all the letters of the alphabet have been used in order".
The normal ''
Iroha'', however, is a
pangram.
Alphabet poem
Invented by
Paul West, a British-born American novelist, poet, and essayist, the alphabet poem is a stricter modern variation of the abecedarius. It consists of 13 lines, each consisting of two words, each word starting with a letter which follows the initial letter of the preceding word. West introduced the alphabet poem in his book ''Alphabet Poetry'', a cycle of 26 poems, the first of which starts with AB and ends with YZ, the second one starting with BC and ending with ZA, and the last one starting with ZA and ending in XY.
Due to the constraints, West allows himself few liberties here and there, as can be witnessed in this example:
Artichokes, Bubbly,
Caviar, Dishes
Epicures Favor,
Gourmets Hail;
Ices, Juicy
Kickshaws, Luxurious
Mousses, Nibblesome
Octopus, Pheasant,
Quiches, Sweets,
Treats Utterly
Vanquish Weightwatchers:
Xenodochy's
Yum-yum!
See also
*
Abecedarium
*
Alphabet song
*
Alphabiography
*
Pangram
References
{{Authority control
Graphic poetry
Word games